Analysing pedagogy: the problem of

framing

Ursula Hoadley

Abstract

The sociologist Basil Bernstein presents a delicate and rigorous conceptual frame forresearching pedagogy, which enables an analysis of transmission and acquisition in relationto social class. Bernstein’s theoretical project demonstrates how class relations generateand distribute different forms of communication and ways of making meaning whichdifferentially position subjects with respect to schooling and its requirements. The purposeof this article is to interrogate the use of Bernstein’s theory in analysing pedagogy, inparticular in relation to the two key concepts of classification and framing which underpinhis theory. The article considers the application of the theory in the South African context,and the emergence of empirical texts that ‘fall out’ of the theoretical frame. Thedevelopment of the theory in relation to these texts is consequently explored.

The article is located within a broader study addressing the reproduction of social classdifferences through pedagogy (Hoadley, 2005). The research was conducted in SouthAfrican primary schools in 2004. Drawing on a range of data, including classroomobservation, interview and student task data, the study sought to develop a framework forthe analysis of pedagogic variation across social class school settings, and to show howinequalities are potentially amplified through the pedagogic practices found in classrooms.

Bernsteinian studies of pedagogy have asserted the centrality of the evaluativecriteria in identifying pedagogic practice optimal to promoting success inschooling for, especially working class, students. The evaluative criteriaspecify the requirements for students’ production of the legitimate text.Making the evaluative criteria explicit involves “clearly telling children whatis expected of them, of identifying what is missing from their textualproduction, of clarifying the concepts, of leading them to make synthesis andbroaden concepts and considering the importance attributed to language as amediator of the development of higher mental processes” (Morais, Neves andPires, 2004 , p.8). A number of careful empirical studies have emphasizedmaking the evaluative criteria explicit as a key variable in optimising workingclass students’ success in school (for example, Rose, 2004; Fontinhas, Moraisand Neves, 1995; Morais, 2002). It is framing, or control, over the evaluativecriteria that is particularly interrogated in this article.

16 Journal of Education, No. 40, 2006

The article begins with a discussion of Bernstein’s theory, focusingparticularly on classification and framing, and the concepts that are used laterin the discussion of data and theory development. An analysis of classroomobservation data is then presented, and the use of the theory in relation to thatdata is considered. The article concludes with some reflections on theimplications of the analysis presented.

Bernstein and pedagogy

For Bernstein, education specializes consciousness with respect to schoolways of organising experience and making meaning, or what has been referredto elsewhere as context-independent meanings (Holland, 1981), elaboratedcode (Bernstein, 1975), or a ‘school code’ (Taylor, Muller and Vinjevold,2003). Whereas everyone has access to the commonsense knowledge ofeveryday life, schooling inducts learners into the ‘uncommonsense’knowledge of formal education - or, the school code. Bernstein talks about thisprocess in terms of the specialization of ‘voice’, which refers to the way inwhich “subjectivity is created through the socialization of individuals intocategories of agents, knowledge and contexts that are distinguished by theparticularity of their voice” (Dooley, 2001, p.77). ‘Specialization’ then“reveals differences from, rather than commonality. It means that youreducational identity and specific skills are clearly marked and bounded”(Bernstein, 1975, p.81).

The purpose of schooling then is to specialize learners’ voice with respect tothe school code. Put another way, pedagogy in this view inducts learners into a‘school’ way of organizing experience and making meaning. This essentiallyentails the transmission and acquisition of context-independent meanings, oran ‘elaborated code’.

How do we identify the specialization of voice, or more precisely, whether thetransmission is doing the work of specializing? Conventionally, in theBernsteinian literature, specialization of voice is adumbrated in terms ofclassification and framing values – particular combinations of thesedimensions give rise to variations in the form of the elaborated code.

In summary then, the specializing of consciousness (and this generally willentail the acquisition of context-independent means of organizing experienceand making meaning) happens through two key mechanisms which are at theheart of Bernstein’s theory: classification and framing, which refer,respectively, to power and control.

Hoadley: Analysing pedagogy: the problem of framing 17

Bernstein’s theory of pedagogy is encapsulated in his theorizing of pedagogicdiscourse. Pedagogic discourse describes the specialized form ofcommunication whereby differential transmission and acquisition is effected(Bernstein, 1990). Pedagogic discourse describes the relay of pedagogy. Itconsists of an instructional discourse embedded in a regulative discourse,where the instructional discourse is concerned with the transmission/acquisition of specific competences, skills and knowledge, and the regulativediscourse is about the underlying theory of pedagogy and the expectations ofcharacter, conduct and manner. Put simply, instructional discourse isconcerned with the transmission of knowledge and skills; regulative discourseis akin to the ‘hidden curriculum’.

Classification and framing

Bernstein provides a language for the description of pedagogic discoursethrough the concepts of classification and framing. At a higher level ofabstraction, classification refers to the social division of labour. At the macrolevel classification generates categories of agents and discourses: thecategories or insulations are instantiations of power. At the micro level,classification is about the organizational or structural aspects of pedagogicpractice. Classification is about relations between, and the degree ofmaintenance between categories, and these include the boundaries betweenagents, spaces and discourses.

Classification is expressed as being strong (where boundaries are explicit andcategories are insulated from one another), or weak (where there is integration,or where the boundary is weak or blurred). In terms of discourses, the relationsbetween different subject areas (inter-disciplinary relations), and betweenschool knowledge and everyday knowledge (inter-discursive relations) areconsidered, as well as the relation between knowledge within a particularsubject area (intra-discursive). With respect to agents, the theory identifieshow teachers and learners’ pedagogic identities are demarcated.

Where classification at the macro level is related to the social division oflabour, framing refers to social relations within this social division. That is,specific social relations in production/reproduction generate particularpractices which we can talk about in terms of framing, or control relations.Framing, therefore, refers to relations within (within boundaries). Framing, ina sense, supports classification, it produces ‘the animation of the power grid’(Hasan, 2002), but it also opens up the potential for the change of boundaries,the contesting of power relations. It is through interaction (framing) thatboundaries between discourses, spaces and subjects are defined, maintainedand changed.

18 Journal of Education, No. 40, 2006

Because Bernstein privileges a particular definition of pedagogy which is hierarchical, and1

where the transmitter is in possession of the rules for evaluation, learner control over the

discursive rules of pedagogic practice must be ‘apparent’. This would also explain why the

rule for regulating the conduct of transmitters and acquirers is the ‘hierarchical’ rule

(Dooley, 2001, p.61).

There is, therefore, a crucial relation between classification and framing. It isframing (control) which contains within it the making and the unmaking of theclassification (power). It is in the distinction between power and control thatBernstein allows the intentional and structural aspects of power (Atkinson,1985) of conventional sociological theories to co-exist, and operatedialectically.

At the micro level of pedagogic practice, framing refers to the location ofcontrol over the rules of communication. “Framing refers to the degree ofcontrol teacher and pupil possess over the selection, sequencing, pacing andevaluation of the knowledge transmitted and received in the pedagogicalrelationship” (Bernstein 1975, p.88). Conventionally, framing has to do withthe way in which the relationship between the teacher and the learner is set up,where strong framing refers to a limited degree of options for students, andweak framing implies more ‘apparent’ control by learners. Again, framing is1

expressed in terms of its strength or degree of control. Strong framing wouldimply that students have limited control over the ‘relations within’ and alimited degree of control over the sequencing, pacing, selection and evaluationof the knowledge transmitted.

There are, however, difficulties in working with the concepts of classificationand framing empirically. Because they are dialectically linked, to ‘see’ themseparately poses a challenge for the researcher. Classification cannot maintainitself without framing. Thus, instances of the classification relation are evidentonly through the framing relations, the interactional. The interactional and theorganizational are dialectically linked, and empirical instances of one alwaysimply the other. Framing is, after all, defined as pedagogic discourse, whichBernstein (1996, p.28) sets out as:

instructional discourse IDFraming = ––––––––––––––––––

regulative discourse RD

Classification is in a hierarchical relation to framing, it is prior, but it is emptywithout the mechanisms to achieve the boundary – that is, framing. Hence thedialectic. The difficulty is also alluded to in Bernstein (1996, p.19), where heargues that “power and control are analytically distinguished and operate at

Hoadley: Analysing pedagogy: the problem of framing 19

Thus, for example, classification can be used to describe the way in which knowledge is2

organized and the relationship between educational knowledge and everyday knowledge.

When talking about the extent to which teacher and learner control selection of content (i.e.

the recruitment of everyday narratives, for example), this could constitute framing over

selection, not classification. When framing over selection is weak, this has an effect on

classification in that, at least temporarily, it reduces the specialty of the pedagogic

discourse.

different levels of analysis. Empirically, we shall find that they are embeddedin each other.”

The relationship between everyday knowledge and school knowledge is a casein point. Bernstein would describe these differences in terms of framing:“Thus we can consider the variations in the strengths of frames as these referto the strength of the boundary between educational knowledge and everydaycommunity knowledge of teacher and taught” (Bernstein, 1975, p.206).Atkinson (1985), referring to the same quotation, has argued that, in practice,“this latter aspect of boundary seems equally a matter of classification andframe, since it is often related directly to the relative purity and strength of themembrane of curriculum contents. Empirical research tends to reflect thisoverlap and ambiguity” (Atkinson, 1985, p.136).2

In relation to framing, Bernstein asserts that “control is double faced for itcarries both the power of reproduction and the potential for its change”(Bernstein, 1996, p.19). The distinction between power and control, unique inthe discipline of sociology, thus allows for the description of the making andpotential unmaking of the social reproduction of inequality, one of the keyconcerns of Bernstein and those who draw on his work.

Bernstein (2000, p.100) provides a taut formula for classifying codes in termsof the different dimensions and values outlined above:

E

+-C /+-Fie ie

Here E stands for orientation to meaning – elaborated, or what was referred toearlier as the school code. The line stands for the embedding of the orientationin classification and framing values. Variation in these classification andframing values gives rise to different modalities of pedagogic practice(Bernstein, 2000).

Classification and framing describe the structural and interactional aspects ofpedagogic practice, exposing the power and control relations that inhere in

20 Journal of Education, No. 40, 2006

pedagogic practice. These concepts are connected at both macro and microlevels to a set of related concepts which allow for the analysis of the workingsof power and control, in particular in relation to transmission and acquisitionprocesses.

Classification provides the key to distinguishing contexts. It is classificationwhich orients the speaker to what is expected and what is legitimate given thecontext. It provides the recognition rules for what is required. Framingregulates how legitimate meanings may be put together and made public,crucially through the evaluative criteria. These are the realization rules,referring to how an appropriate text may be realized. The related concepts aresummarized in diagrammatic form below.

Figure 1: Classification and framing and related concepts (adapted fromDowling, 1999, p.9; Bernstein, 1990, p.31 and Bernstein 1990, p.38)

Power Control

Social division of labour (structural) Social relations (interactional)

Classification Framing

Relations between Relations within

Recognition rules Realization rules

The point is that there is a differential distribution of power and controlrelations across different social classes, and these produce different practicesand forms of consciousness. It is through the codes that we see the differentialpositioning of subjects of different social class groupings, dominant anddominated. Bernstein poses the question in this way:

What we are asking here is how the distribution of power and the principles of control are

transformed, at the level of the subject, into different, invidiously related, organizing

principles, in such a way as to create the possibility of change in such positioning (1990,

p.13).

And he answers his own question like this:

The broad answer given by this thesis is that class relations generate, distribute, reproduce,

and legitimate distinctive forms of communication, which transmit dominant and dominated

codes, and that the subjects are differently positioned by these codes in the process of

acquiring them (1990, p.13).

Hoadley: Analysing pedagogy: the problem of framing 21

Applying the theory: the social reproduction ofinequalities through pedagogy

The broader study referred to earlier (Hoadley, 2005) sought to develop amodel that showed the mechanisms whereby social differences are reproducedthrough pedagogic practice. The main data source in this regard was classroomobservation data, collected across three days in eight Grade 3 teachers’classrooms, teaching in different social class school settings in the greaterCape Town area. Literacy and mathematics lessons were extracted from thedata for analysis.

The analytic frame consisted of a number of dimensions, and considered theinstructional form (drawing on Pedro, 1981), and the strategies deployed byteachers (drawing on the work of Dowling, 1998), and the structure of thepedagogy (using the work of Bernstein, 1975; 1990; 2000). It is the latteraspect of the analysis, and the use of the concepts of classification andespecially framing, that are considered in this article.

In relation to the analysis of the classroom observation data, classification andframing addressed two dimensions of variation across the differentclassrooms: classification identified the structuring of discourses, spaces andagents (the ‘what’ and ‘who’ of pedagogy), and framing, described the relativecontrol teachers and learners had over selection, sequencing, pacing,evaluation and hierarchical rules (the ‘how’ of pedagogy). These conceptualdimensions are summarized in Figure 2 on the next page:

22 Journal of Education, No. 40, 2006

Figure 2: Conceptual categories for characterising pedagogy

Framing

Discursive rules Extent to which teacher controls selection of content

Extent to which teacher controls sequencing of content

Extent to which teacher controls pacing of content

Extent to which teacher makes explicit the rules forevaluation of learners’ performances

Hierarchical rules Extent to which teacher makes formal or informal the socialrelations between teacher and learners

Classification

Relationsbetweendiscourses

Inter-disciplinary (strength of boundary between the subjectarea and other subject areas)

Inter-discursive (strength of boundary between the subjectarea and everyday knowledge)

Relations betweenspaces

Teacher–learner (strength of demarcation between spacesused by teachers and learners)

Space for learning (strength of boundary between space,internal and external, to the classroom and learning)

Relationsbetween agents

Teacher–learner (strength of demarcation of pedagogicidentities)

For the broader study (Hoadley, 2005), a coding instrument broadly followingthe work of Morais and Neves (2001), was designed to assign values, in termsof framing, to the discursive rules of pedagogic practice: the selection,sequencing, pacing and evaluative criteria of educational knowledge. Thecoding instrument also assigned values to the hierarchical rules (the extent towhich teacher and learner have control over the order, character and manner ofthe conduct of learners). The instrument also considered discourse relations interms of the strength of classification (or boundedness) between differentsubject areas (inter-discursive) and between school knowledge and everydayknowledge (inter-discursive). The instrument further looked at theclassification of spaces and agents.

In the coding instrument, the high-level concepts of classification and framingwere translated into a coding scheme to read the data. The indicators, ortheoretical constructs, named empirical instances of particular abstract

Hoadley: Analysing pedagogy: the problem of framing 23

concepts. The coding scheme comprised 19 indicators, providing a means formaking the conceptual categories shown in Figure 2 ‘observable’. An exampleof one of the indicators (No.5), for the framing of the evaluation criteria, isgiven in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3: Extract from the coding instrument for analysing the classroomobservation data in terms of the classification and framing ofpedagogic discourse

Discursive rule EVALUATION CRITERIA (F )+-

The extent to which teacher and learner have control over the evaluative criteria of theinstructional knowledge pertaining to the meaning of concepts and principles and theirappropriate realisation

5. In thecourse oflearnersconductingan activityor task

F F F F F++ + ! !! 0

Evaluativecriteria very

clear andexplicit

Evaluativecriteria quite

clear andexplicit

Evaluativecriteria quiteunclear and

implicit

Evaluativecriteria veryunclear and

implicit

Transmissionof evaluativecriteria notobservable

The teacher

constantly

moves

around and

monitors

what learners

are doing

and makes

comments.

To the whole

class, and to

individuals,

she

repeatedly

goes over

what

constitutes

an

appropriate

performance.

The teacher

makes some

points, either

to the whole

class or to

individual

learners, so

as to clarify

what is

expected of

them in the

task.

The teacher

makes a few

comments

during the

course of the

task and

looks at

some of the

learners

work or

listens to

them read.

However,

this is not

sustained

and the

criteria for a

successful

production

are not made

explicit to

all.

The teacher

looks at a

few learners’

work when it

is brought to

her attention.

She rarely or

never listens

to them read.

She seldom

makes a

comment to

the learner.

Comments

are not

extended to

the whole

class.

The teacher

engages in

other work in

her space and

is not seen to

look at what

the learners

are doing.

She makes

no comment

on the work

as it

proceeds. No

action is

taken to

ascertain

what the

learners are

doing.

24 Journal of Education, No. 40, 2006

In Figure 3 framing is expressed in terms of its strength or weakness usingstandard Bernsteinian notation – F representing the strongest framing (or++

teacher control) over the evaluation criteria and F representing very weak--

framing. F will be explained below. A sample of lessons was then coded0

using the coding scheme. Each lesson was coded for 19 indicators (such as theone above) for the different dimensions of pedagogy as offered by the theory.In the course of this initial analysis changes were made to the coding scheme.A similar process had already been undertaken with the pilot data and thecoding scheme, and this was repeated. The coding scheme in the end wentthrough at least six iterations. The ‘external language of description’(Bernstein, 2000) – the indicators, or theoretical constructs – was thusdeveloped through iterations between the theory and the empirical data.

An analysis of text and the F value0

Criticisms of the use of Bernstein’s work in South Africa have often referredto the mechanical deployment of the categories, where “It would appear, fromthe criticisms made, that we enter the field with categories shaped rather likecontainers, into which we scoop our data!” (Ensor and Hoadley, 2004). Here, Iwant to show, at some length, how the potential for theory development opensup through analysis. This is a modest exemplar, but it does illustrate thegenerative effects of the process of analysis in terms of the theoreticalconcepts informing the study. In its specificity, Moore (2001) explains howBernstein’s theory holds the potential to avoid the circularity referred toearlier:

By rigorously specifying in advance what we should expect to see if the theory holds, we

can measure the limitations of the theory if we fail to find it or encounter other things

unexpected and unspecified. In this way the theory can avoid the circularity that so often

characterises (and vitiates) research applications of theories lacking such methodological

depth (p.368).

Bernstein’s sociological theory of pedagogy presents the researcher with ahighly systematic account of how pedagogy works. The theory is worked outwith a rigour and precision that gives rise to an array of inter-related conceptsthat have a delicacy and ‘methodological depth’ which is extremely useful tothe researcher.

However, Bernstein’s theoretical categories do not allow for a direct readingof the empirical: a language of description is needed, and a significant amountof work needs to be undertaken in order to bring the concepts closer to thedata for its reading. Here I illustrate an instance of where such work was done,in relation to the conceptual category framing. I also reflect on some of the

Hoadley: Analysing pedagogy: the problem of framing 25

difficulties raised earlier in working with the concept. I take an example fromclassroom observation data generated in the broader study (Hoadley, 2005) toshow how the theoretical range F to F for the evaluative rules failed to++ --

capture certain pedagogical forms in the data. The example comes from aGrade 3 literacy lesson in a classroom in a school in Khayelitsha. The childrenin the classroom come from the surrounding working class community. Thelesson is one of a number focusing on the theme of trees.

The teacher stands at the front of the class and pages through the textbook. All the learners

have a copy of the textbook in front of them.

1

2

Teacher: ‘Here people, I like this section on leaves. We were learning about trees, neh? And

then went on to leaves.

The teacher goes on to explain what the book says about colours, that there are shades of

colours, for example, blue-green. She copies a set of leaves, which shows these colour

variations, from the textbook onto the board. However, she copies only the set of leaves, not the

colours. What the teacher has encountered in the textbook is the end of a previous section on

colours, which precedes a section on trees. The iconographic indicator – leaves – has led her

to select this page as leaves relate to the more general theme in use, trees. But the topic of trees

is only addressed halfway down the page. The lesson continues.

The teacher numbers the leaves she has drawn on the board and the learners shout out the

numbers as she writes them. The teacher then moves directly onto the next section in the book

on trees.

3

4

5

Teacher: He says here there are parts of the tree, that’s what I like, but then he says we don’t

tell colours as they are. So here are the parts of the tree. He says write them in their order from

the biggest to the smallest. Read these as I write them on the board.

The teacher writes on the board: tree, leaf, branch, bush, and addresses the learners.

6

7

8

9

10

Teacher: Which are found at the bottom of a tree?

Learner: Roots are found at the bottom of the tree.

Teacher: No no. Don’t tell me things you haven’t seen. I’m not asking for what you’ve thought

about, I’m asking for what you’ve seen. Okay, from the tree, bush, leaf and branch, which one

do you get from the bottom of the tree? Things that you get at the bottom. Bottom, bottom.’

The teacher underlines ‘bottom’ on the board. Another learner says roots. After a while the

teacher looks back at the text book and realises that she has made a mistake, reading ‘tree,

bush, branches, leaf’, instead of ‘stem, roots, branches, leaves’. She moves directly on to the

next question, which requires writing from biggest to smallest, tree, branch, leaf, bush.

Learners respond and the teacher writes each word on the board. She then returns to the

question of what is found at the bottom of the tree. As she writes, learners repeat the words

over and over again. The following exchange occurs as she moves onto the next section in the

book:

26 Journal of Education, No. 40, 2006

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Learners: leaves, leaves, leaves, leaves, leaves, leaves leaves, leaves, leaves leaves, leaves,

leaves leaves, leaves, leaves

Teacher: Hey stop. The reason why we are repeating this is because you do your own thing

when I turn my back on you. Now the writer says the same words rhyme at the end. Now

we’ve done a tree. Haven’t we done a tree?

Learners: Yes Miss. Yes we’ve done it.

Teacher: Now we know how a tree is formed. Now the writer says there are certain words that

rhyme at the end. This is what I like. And he also says write those that rhyme in the box.

[Teacher looks at the book for a while] Ja, here’s work. Close your books. I’ll give you work on

the board. Don’t talk Grade 3. Don’t talk, don’t talk. Sleep on your desks. Lower your heads.

The teacher writes 6 words on the board: tree, fruits, home, flowers, smoke, bushes, roots.

21

22

23

24

Teacher: Listen, listen. I did not say shout on the top of the roof. Now write the rhyming words.

He [the author of the textbook] says some words are rhyming at the end so he wants you to

write those that rhyme at the end. Here’s the correct date, the thirty-first. Let’s write. Let’s

work. No talking. I want rhyming words. I want rhyming words. I want rhyming words.

Later the teacher bangs on her table with a ruler and shouts at the learners to be quiet.

25 Teacher: Write, write, even though you don’t know.

The teacher sits at her desk for the remaining 23 minutes of the lesson. At no point does she see

what learners are writing. The bell rings for break and learners close their books and go out.

A consideration of the coding of this lesson will be illustrative of the codingprocedure in general, and what I define as the F category in particular.0

In terms of the regulative discourse, the hierarchical rules would be coded F .++

The control relation is generally about constraint and is based on theteacher/pupil hierarchy, rather than an explication of rules or principlesunderlying the control. In this imperative form (F ) the acquirer is given no++

options in responding to the control of the teacher, apart from an explicitchallenge to authority.

Selection and sequence in this instance would both be coded F . The reason++

for this is that the teacher decides what knowledge will be transmitted and inwhat order transmission will take place. Learners are not given opportunitiesto alter the selection and the sequence of the knowledge, even where, at onepoint (line 7) their interjections potentially are a corrective to the teacher’s

Hoadley: Analysing pedagogy: the problem of framing 27

However, it could be argued that, in this case, the teacher in fact substitutes the textbook for3

herself; or she recruits a proxy voice – the sequence and selection of the textbook – because

her voice isn’t able to do the pedagogic work. Neither student nor teacher here appears to be

controlling the knowledge but rather the textbook is followed to the word, strongly dictating

the sequence and selection. So an initial (iconic) selection in terms of the theme ‘trees’ is

made, but from there the sequencing follows that of the textbook from the top of the page to

the bottom.

misreading of the text.3

The coding of the framing of pacing is slightly more complex. Although it isclear that the pace of the lesson is extremely slow, it is the teacher whocontrols this. Learners do not intervene when they have completed work wellahead of time. It is the teacher who asserts the pacing or expected rate oftransmission. She decides that the lesson will continue until the bell rings, andlearners do not have control over the stipulated pacing. Pacing is therefore alsocoded F .++

A problem arises, however, in the coding of the evaluative criteria. Therequired performance of learners ultimately is to copy down words that rhyme,but no concept of rhyming is transmitted, and its recognition is potentiallyopaque to the learners. Because the evaluative criteria have not beentransmitted, the teacher can only elicit the legitimate text from the learners onthe basis of assertion: ‘Write, write, even though you don’t know’ (line 25),and that legitimate text appears devoid of instructional content. The learnersare required to write; what they write does not seem to matter.

Similarly, the earlier exchange in the same lesson unfolds as:

Teacher: Now we’ve done a tree. Haven’t we done a tree?

Learners: Yes Miss. Yes we’ve done it.

Teacher: Now we know how a tree is formed (lines 14–17).

Again, the legitimate text is extracted on the basis of assertion. The learnershad merely named parts of a tree up to this point; they had not addressed ‘howa tree is formed’. The framing of the evaluative criteria is difficult to categorise as either weakor strong. Thus the category F in the coding scheme has been developed in0

order to capture such instances of transmission, which appear devoid ofevaluative criteria relating to the instructional discourse, or where these are

28 Journal of Education, No. 40, 2006

There is not an absence of control. The teacher asserts control here, but there is no evidence4

of the teachers’ specialized voice. Without the evaluative criteria – that which specifies the

legitimate text, students are unable to recognise what is required, and the teacher does not

evaluate their productions according to instructional criteria. Consequently the evaluative

rules are coded F .0

obscured by regulative criteria. That is, the transmission of principles relating4

to the subject knowledge are obscured. All is about comportment, form, orbehaviour. The descriptor for one of the indicators for F for the evaluative0

criteria reads:

Evaluative criteria: In the introduction/explanation/exposition to a topic/task

F – It appears as if no attempt is made to transmit the concepts and principles in the0

instructional practice. What counts as a successful production in terms of instructional

knowledge is therefore totally unclear. The purpose of the task/activity/discussion is

unclear. Learners are unclear as to how to proceed, or they are only given criteria relating to

how they should behave.

It is also evident from this example that the coding of the data can at times bederived only in conjunction with an assessment of what learners recognize andrealize in their performances. This is because there must be certainty (usingthis instance as an example) that the learners have not spent several priorlessons focusing on rhyme, and that the absence of an explicit articulation ofthe evaluative criteria could therefore be considered redundant. In such casesreference can be made to learner productions and learner notebooks, or toobservation of learners carrying out the tasks, or to a consideration of a‘teaching unit’: a series of lessons with a particular trajectory.

The evaluative criteria can also not be coded as extremely weak (F ), as this--

would imply that it is the learners who have control over what the legitimatetext would constitute. The strong framing over the hierarchical rules and rulesof selection mitigate against this. It must be emphasized that F does not lie on0

the continuum (i.e. it is not extremely weak framing), but rather is a rupture. F0

represents an inability to observe the code. It may also point to a breakdown inpedagogic discourse, or the absence of (a particular dimension of) pedagogy.Bernstein (2000) at one point does suggest the possibility of the F . In the0

following quotation we recall that realization rules are transmitted andacquired through framing relations and the recognition rules throughclassification:

Many children of the marginal classes may indeed have a recognition rule, that is, they can

recognise the power relations in which they are involved, and their positioning in them, but

they may not possess the realisation rule. If they do not possess the realisation rule, they

cannot speak the expected legitimate text. These children in school, then, will not have

Hoadley: Analysing pedagogy: the problem of framing 29

acquired the legitimate pedagogic code, but they will have acquired their place in the

classificatory system. For these children, the experience of school is essentially an

experience of the classificatory system and their place in it (Bernstein, 2000, p.17, my

emphasis).

Bernstein here acknowledges the possibility that one can be positioned withinthe school (that is, one always gets sorted into the social relation) but have noaccess to the realization rule. The question arises as to how one codes framingvalues in such a pedagogy. Here I propose the necessity of including an F0

value for the framing over the evaluative criteria where the absence of beingable to observe the pedagogic code for instructional discourse is confronted. Ina sense, it represents a collapse of the instructional discourse into theregulative discourse.

Dowling (1999) develops a detailed critique of framing. His response to thedifficulties alluded to above is to dispense with framing. He does this becausehe does not operate with a notion of boundary. Classification for him refers todegrees of specialization rather than strength of insularities, and his project isto analyze the contents of the classification rather than elucidate its structure. Iwould argue, however, that the distinction between classification and framingin the analysis of the reproduction of differences through pedagogy and thespecializing of consciousness is crucial. This is because the theoreticalunderpinnings of these concepts in power and control, and the social divisionof labour and social relations, allow for a consideration of the making and theunmaking of power.

This brings us back to the power (classification) and control (framing)dialectic. If the framing (over instructional content in the evaluative rules) isabsent, the potential for the unmaking of the classification is compromised. Inthe extract we see a weak classification of school knowledge – the labeledparts of the tree are not related to the formation of the tree, the words are notinterrogated in terms of the concept of rhyming. There is a predominance ofeveryday activity in naming, and conceptual elements are subordinated to thetheme of trees. It is through the evaluative rules that we would see thestrengthening (or weakening) of these boundaries. This would entail aspecification of what it is that learners should know, do or understand withrespect to the instructional knowledge. Without this there can be no change inthe classification. One is merely sorted. One is stuck.

When there is an apparent absence of evaluative criteria, what then issequenced, selected and paced? Is it possible that F in fact represents an0

absence of pedagogy, and should therefore be bracketed off from an analysisof classification and framing? The reluctance to do this is based on what weknow from classroom research – that this is a form of pedagogy (or non-

30 Journal of Education, No. 40, 2006

pedagogy) not uncommon in schools in South Africa (see especially Ensor etal, 2004; Hoadley, 2003; Jacklin, 2004). Within the same analytic framework,therefore, I have attempted to capture more conventional understandings ofwhat pedagogy entails, and that which appears to fall outside theseunderstandings, or ‘pedagogic breakdown’.

But there is not an absence of transmission activity. It is still necessary toelucidate what it is that is transmitted, if not the evaluative rules. This is wherethe theory needs to be either extended or considered in relation to alternativeexplanatory frameworks. In the broader project (Hoadley, 2005) I drew on thework of Dowling (1998) to look at the contents of the meanings transmitted.His notions of localizing and specializing strategies in particular allowed for aconsideration of the relationship between what was transmitted and thedomain to which it referred. Knowledge in this analysis draws its authorityeither from the public domain (broadly everyday meanings), or the esotericdomain (disciplinary understandings). Unlike Dowling, however, I do noteschew framing. In this particular case, framing allows for the analysis of whatit is that is absent in the structure of the pedagogy, and what the implicationsare with respect to power and control relations.

To return now to the extract and its analysis, it is not possible to drawconclusions on the basis of a single lesson, but were we to find this patterningof pedagogy across a series of lessons, weeks, a year, we could then say thatthe potential for the specialization of the students’ voice is seriouslyundermined in the pedagogy. The students’ potential for acquiring the schoolcode is compromised.

The general methodology for operationalizing the concepts of classificationand framing broadly follows the work of Morais and Neves (2001); Morais,Neves and Pires (2004); and more generally the work of the SociologicalStudies of the Classroom project at the University of Lisbon (ESSA).However, the original theory of classification and framing was developed incontexts of schooling that were possibly far more functional, in conventionalnotions of the working of schools, than many schools found in South Africa.Further, the theory and its application to classroom observation data wasextended and developed largely in Portugal with respect to science, twocontexts which are in all probability far more strongly classified thanphenomena that arise in other contexts (for example, literacy learning in SouthAfrica, shown in the example above).

Thus, in order to capture pedagogy of very different types on the same scale, itwas necessary to extend that scale to include a greater range of pedagogicforms, and this emerged in relation to the framing of the evaluative rules. Inthis way the original theory begins to open up both the possibilities and the

Hoadley: Analysing pedagogy: the problem of framing 31

exigencies for further theorizing. However, it was necessary to start with asound theory in order to make this visible. “Without a model, the researchercan never know what could have been and was not” (Bernstein, 2000, p.135).

Discussion

What does classification and framing offer? It shows the inner logic ofpedagogy and reveals the structuring of inequality with respect to differentgroups of pupils. We have known for a long time that schooling reproducesinequalities, or at the least interrupts these in very limited measure. We need toknow exactly how. Why, beyond academic interest? A number of studies haveattempted to make explicit pedagogic modalities which optimise learning forworking class children.

The on-going work of ESSA (for example, Morais and Miranda, 1996; Moraisand Neves, 2001; Morais, Neves and Pires, 2004) has focused on the microprocesses in the classroom to explore the “relations present in the context ofreproduction of the pedagogic discourse” (Neves, Morais and Afonso, 2004,p.280). The various authors show that specific aspects of pedagogic practiceare favourable to the development of the elaborated coding orientationrequired by the school (Fontinhas, et al., 1995). The work of ESSA comprisesaction research, and more effective pedagogic modalities, derived from theresearch, are designed and tested with learners from different social classbackgrounds. Teachers are thus explicitly trained to teach particular modalitiesof elaborated code.

Morais (2002) summarizes some of the results of the empirical work of theESSA, explicitly defining what values of classification and framing, alongwhich dimensions, proved optimal for enhanced achievement of working-classstudents. Consistent with all of the ESSA work, Morais (2002) again stresses“explicating the evaluative criteria as the most crucial aspect of a pedagogicpractice to promote higher levels of learning of all students” (p.568).

In particular, for students from lower social groups, the explication of theevaluative rules, and weak framing over pacing, creating the opportunity forstudents to intervene in the expected rate of their acquisition, are those aspectsidentified as being most crucial in facilitating their access to school learning.Likewise Rose (2004), in his research into literacy pedagogy for ‘indigenouslearners’, specifies precisely the dimensions facilitating a weakening of thenegative relation between social class and educational achievement: aweakening of the framing of pacing and sequencing rules, and a weakening of“the framing regulating the flow of communication between the schoolclassroom and the community the school draws on” (p.106).

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In the light of these findings, F for the evaluative criteria is a particularly0

devastating indictment on what opportunities, especially working class,children have for learning in some South African schools. There is an openingto explore further, in the South African context, what the optimal variationalong the pedagogic dimensions offered by the theory, are for working classchildren here. Further, and particularly in relation to the South African context, an analysisof pedagogy which specifies its intricate dimensions allows us to think morecarefully about the external regulation of teaching. If we are aware that thereare many teachers whose voice is inadequately specialized for the task oftransmitting school knowledge, then questions are raised as to what form ofteacher training we advance, and what type of curricula and textbooks weconstruct. In the latter case, if teachers recruit the textbook as a proxy voice, itis necessary to consider the level of specificity in particular in relation toconceptual knowledge contained in textbooks. We need to question how it isthat we can design curricula most likely to advantage those that most needteachers to make explicit what the criteria are for their success at school.Bernstein’s theory allows us to pay close attention to how power structuresand how control makes and unmakes the categories into which learners aresorted.

References

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Bernstein, B. 1975. Class, codes and control volume 3: towards a theory ofeducational transmissions. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Bernstein, B. 1990. Class, codes and control, volume 4: the structuring ofpedagogic discourse. London: Routledge.

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Dooley, K.T. 2001. Adapting to diversity: pedagogy for Taiwanese students inmainstream Australian secondary school classes. Unpublished PhD thesis.Brisbane: Griffith University. Available at: http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/uploads/approved/adt-QGU20030102.105906/public/02Whole.pdf

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Ursula HoadleyUniversity of Cape Town and Human Sciences Research Council

uhoadley@hsrc.ac.za